Two-way verbal communications are well known in the art. In a full-duplex two-way communication (as with standard landline or cellular telephone technology), both parties to a conversation are technically able to transmit their own verbalizations and to receive the other party's statements simultaneously if they so wish. Such capability usually permits each party to well accommodate the ordinary dynamics of human verbal interchange.
There are some applications, however, when the enabling technology is less accommodating to the shifting dynamics of verbal exchanges. For example, some wireless and wireline systems will facilitate a group communication amongst a plurality of nodes (such as wireless mobile nodes) by permitting only a single node to source audio content which audio content is then provided to the remaining plurality of listening nodes. When the sourcing node concludes its transmission the system will then typically permit another of the nodes to initiate a new transmission for reception, again, by the other nodes. Often, however, contention occurs for this reply capability; that is, more than one of the available nodes will then attempt to communicate and/or otherwise indicate a desire to communicate to the group of nodes. Since multiple nodes cannot simultaneously verbally communicate in such a system, such contention must be resolved or chaos may ensue.
One simple approach has been to provide a queue. Communication requests are queued as received with a next communication opportunity being extended to a most highly queued node. Such an approach has the benefit of relative simplicity, and may provide satisfactory performance in some restricted settings. In general, however, such an approach does not well reflect and accommodate the ordinary dynamics of verbal communication, particularly in a group setting. For example, a first party listening to a verbal presentation may initially wish to ask a question regarding a particular point made by the speaker. This first party may then express their desire to speak (in order to pose their question) and, when they are the first listener to express this desire, they will be placed relatively high in the queue. Upon continuing to listen to the speaker, however, the first party may discover that their point of interest is later covered in sufficient detail such that they no longer wish to express their question. When such an event occurs, however, this party will continue to retain their relatively highly queued position. This, in turn, can lead to delay, confusion, and/or a misallocation of resources within the communication system.
This and numerous other examples make clear that previously known contention-resolving queues will not typically accommodate, track, reflect, or abet the ordinary and expected dynamics of group verbal discourse.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are typically not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention.